Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Applied Materials strives to cooperate with chipmakers to shorten equipment lead time
Applied Materials Korea Country President Park Gwang-sun speaks during a press conference in Seoul, Monday. Courtesy of Applied Materials Korea
By Nam Hyun-woo
Applied Materials Korea Country President Park Gwang-sun said Monday that the semiconductor engineering solutions company is working to help Korean chipmakers optimize performance and maximize output as they expand globally.
During a press conference in Seoul, Park said Korea’s strategic importance in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem has been reassessed in the past year, adding that one of the company’s most important roles is to work closely with customers to forecast long-term demand and supply equipment accordingly.
“We are working closely with our customers to optimize design and maximize output so that our equipment can produce high-quality devices,” Park said.
“Our customers have recently been expanding their fabs globally. SK hynix announced its Indiana fab last week, while Samsung has already begun operations at its Taylor fab. As they expand their global footprint, Applied Materials Korea is working to ensure seamless technical and workforce support.”
Applied Materials Korea Country President Park Gwang-sun, right, speaks during a press conference in Seoul, Monday, while Applied Materials Vice President Mukund Srinivasan, center, listens. Korea Times photo by Nam Hyun-woo
The comments came as demand for memory chips continues to far outpace supply, prompting chipmakers to expand capacity and place additional orders for Applied Materials equipment.
“Our ability to respond to equipment demand is limited in the short term, but we will be much better positioned to meet demand two to three years from now,” Park said. “We are discussing with our customers how to prepare for at least the next three years, rather than focusing on issues over the next three or six months.”
During the conference, Applied Materials Vice President Mukund Srinivasan said the semiconductor industry faces two key challenges: technology and capacity.
On the technology side, he said addressing the memory wall, where memory performance fails to keep pace with logic chips, requires 3D scaling in logic and memory chip manufacturing and packaging.
According to Srinivasan, 3D scaling is an architectural approach that encompasses technologies that stack or integrate components vertically to shorten the physical distance that data must travel and improve energy efficiency. Examples include Gate-All-Around technology for logic chips, stacking memory die in high-bandwidth memory and hybrid bonding for packaging.
“So I would say 3D scaling is how the technology problem is being solved,” he said. “The entire ecosystem has to ramp up, starting with our customers who are building fabs to make enough logic and memory, and then coming to us to supply the machines. … So the industry is working together from a total ecosystem perspective.”
To achieve this, he said Applied Materials is expanding its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center program, in which customers, partners, universities and research institutions collaborate from earlier stages of development to reduce the gap between technology research and mass production.
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are founding partners of the EPIC Center, and the number of collaborative projects under the program has expanded to 11. While the EPIC Center in Silicon Valley focuses on innovation and commercialization, the Applied Collaboration Center Korea in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, supports technology development and validation for mass production.